Elgar: Complete Organ Works

Hereford Cathedral’s mighty Willis organ, built just three years before Elgar composed his *Organ Sonata in G Major* in 1895, leaps to life under Tom Winpenny’s command. He puts the recently restored instrument through its paces with great feeling for the drama of the composer’s four-movement sonata. Winpenny underlines the thematic invention of Elgar’s showpiece with captivating combinations of tone colors and timbres, strikingly so in his fleet-footed delivery of the work’s dreamlike second movement and its utterly sublime “Andante espressivo.” His spirited tempos impart momentum to the noble progress of pieces such as *Loughborough Memorial Chime*, originally written for the inauguration of the carillon at Loughborough War Memorial in 1923, and assured organ arrangements of Elgar’s brass band classic *The Severn Suite* and “Nimrod” from the *Enigma Variations*.